> Financial data can reveal uncomfortable information about a consumer’s preferences and habits; our finances give a window into our lives. Any US CBDC should prioritize user privacy and data protection. In addition, collecting and storing personally identifying user data at all makes it vulnerable to accidental leaks or malicious hacking attempts, so the design of a US CBDC should strive to minimize data collection to only what is critically necessary to safely process transactions.<p>> A CBDC which is in some part run by the central bank does not necessarily require the central bank to have visibility into fine-grained transaction data. Legitimate public policy goals relating to combating criminal activity can be fulfilled while preserving the privacy of the public and preventing a central bank being drawn into the commercial surveillance models which are now prevalent in the private sector.<p>It sounds like they're prioritizing a system that uses cryptography to ensure a zero-trust and plausible deniability environment similar to cash. For the US, I think this is the right path for their government. They need to be able to easily transfer monetary assets to foreign agents or governments without anyone snooping in on them. Even the possibility of a back door would mean that one of their enemies could see where resources are being allocated internationally, which would be a vulnerability.<p>This would also promote use of the currency among others in low trust environments, which is part of why the US dollar has such significant international hegemony in comparison to something like the Yuan/Digital Yuan. No third world government wants to be in the position where the Chinese can see how they're spending their funds and immediately freeze them based on this oversight.
OK, please help me understand:<p>1) Cryptocurrencies are mined decentrally. In this case, who will mine and how?<p>2) Crypto blockchains are secure by having many distributed miners. In this case, how will the blockchain be decentrally secured? (And if it will not be decentrally secured, then will it simply be a central database?)<p>Thanks.
It would be really cool to see all the corrupt money on the blockchain, no more easy lobbying etc. You can exactly see all the government spending (wasting).
A simple question. Is there any reason <i>not</i> to put a Fed backed stablecoin on Ethereum and the other major blockchains? Even if you're crypto-skeptical, what is the downside?<p>In a world where Tether didn't have mass adoption, I can see why you might oppose it. But Tether and other stablecoins already exist and are widely used. DeFi already trivially interacts with fiat prices. We also know that Tether poses a serious, potentially systematic risk. The Fed could put it out of business overnight just by deploying a simple ERC20 token tracker.
> Traditional electronic transaction systems today have high fees, limit access, and have not evolved fast enough to keep pace with the demand for online digital payments.<p>High fees:- How much do merchants/consumer pay today? I am not sure if transacting a digital currency is going to be free.<p>Limit access:- How does the current system limit access? As a merchant I can easily signup with thousands of payment providers.<p>Not evolved fast enough:- I agree with this but from where we were say 20 years ago I would say they have evolved a fair bit.
How is this not just a database?<p>There's no reason for something like this to be a cryptocurrency is the problem, because the central bank literally has the power to issue new currency as it sees fit.<p>Wouldn't this be closer to offering Federal Reserve clearing accounts to regular citizens as a service?
related work -- zkLedger: Privacy-preserving auditing for distributed ledgers.<p>15th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 18) . 2018.
This person... so much talk about convenience of payment, and a total misunderstanding of why goverments want CBDC. And she call herself a PhD? And no word about the threat of CBDC.